Redemption Or Judgement For Sam And Long Run?

Long Run deserves to head the betting for today’s King George on the strength of his second place in the race last year, a performance which is more meritorious than public opinion gives credit for. For a horse who has raced almost exclusively at the top level with admirable consistency, he’s not getting a lot of love from the informed racing public, for all the media still adore him, and it’s worth reiterating why that is. Part of the perceived problem is the failings of his rider, Sam Waley-Cohen. The amateur has proved himself in the past with high-profile wins at the Cheltenham Festival (Liberthine and Tricky Trickster) as well as over Aintree’s Grand National fences (Liberthine again, and twice on Katarino), and clearly doesn’t deserve some of the “posh boy” abuse which has come his way. On the other hand, the relative drought since Long Run won the Gold Cup in 2011 is a worry, and some of Sam’s dash seems to have drained away since that heady day. It may be coincidental that the amateur has ridden just 2 winners over jumps in the last 20 months, and that one of those came on an odds-on Long Run in the Denman Chase at Newbury in February, but for a part-time rider no longer in the first flush of youth, such a sequence must cause some discomfort. It bears repeating that he’s a 5-lb claimer unable to draw that allowance today, and not even his biggest fan would claim he’s the equal of Ruby Walsh or Barry Geraghty in the saddle.   

It’s not all about the dolt on top, of course, and it’s arguably a bigger concern that Long Run himself has long lost any air of invincibility, being defeated twice by a resurgent Kauto Star last season before getting outrun from the last in the Gold Cup by both Synchronised and The Giant Bolster, neither of whom were considered genuinely top-notch before the Cheltenham showpiece. He certainly wasn’t outstayed there, and the bottom line is that he’s simply lacking a genuine change of gear these days. That again looked an issue when he chased home Silviniaco Conti at Haydock last month, and his rating alone won’t give him the right to dispatch today’s rivals. If he’s ridden for a turn of foot, then he’s likely to be found out by any initial change of pace, from what I’ve seen of him in the last 13 months. The best chance which horse and rider have of redemption is to make the theoretical difference in ability tell from an early stage, either by making the running or by pushing the early pacesetter and looking to press on from some way out. In fairness, Waley-Cohen tried to keep himself as close as possible to Kauto Star a year ago only to get outpaced on the turn for home. An identical ride in a race missing the mercurial Kauto Star will make him hard to beat, but the big question is whether the rider has the confidence to ride the race purely to suit himself and not as a function of what others are doing. That is a tactic which will be hard enough to perfect given the likelihood of Junior acting as a spoiler, but big races come replete with big challenges,  and both Sam and Long Run will rightly be judged on how they respond to such a test.